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An anonymous reader writes "Tim Jones over at the EFF's Deep Links Blog just posted an interesting article on the widespread use of deceptive interface techniques on the Web. He began by polling his Twitter and Facebook audience for an appropriate term for this condition and received responses like 'Bait-and-Click' and 'Zuckerpunched.' Ultimately, he chose 'Evil Interfaces' from Greg Conti'sHOPE talk on malicious interface design and follow-up interview with media-savvy puppet Weena. Tim then goes on to dissect Facebook (with pictures). So, what evil interfaces have you encountered on (or off) the Web?"

Honestly, FB should just give us decent privacy controls because the majority of their users won't bother. So its a win-win. FB gets to use whatever they want and the small number of us who want better privacy controls are pleased.

Tell your friends to stop, or use the "un-tag" feature to remove yourself. If people put stuff up that you don't like, contact them. Un-friend people who have no business posting about you, or keep them as friends so you can watch what they do. It ain't perfect, but it's not as hopeless as you make it. Best option is to only hang out with people who share your values systems, or at least respect yours.

The privacy debate is already complex enough without nutters like you joining in. What the hell is a company supposed to do against someone uploading material about someone else? Ban the use of all names and photos? Demand written permission from every person mentioned, every person in any picture?

If other people publish information about you, then it is up to you to stop it, not facebook or any other company. Because that could never work short of shutting down all publishing everywhere.

I actually deleted my facebook profile last week. But that doesn't mean they are actually going to delete my information [...]

More true than you might think.

I played around on Facebook for a few weeks just to see what it was all about but as soon as I heard about their new policies concerning member info, I closed my account. After I finished the process, however, a page popped up letting me know that all I had to do was to use my password to log back on again and everything would be back the way it was.

After "Deleting", do not attempt to log in for at least 2 weeks to test it's gone (I'd suggest waiting even longer, such as a month), because otherwise FB may think you're changing your mind and reactivate the account even despite choosing to delete it.

I deleted all my pictures and I did use the delete account link (not deactivate) but I didn't unfriend everyone. I was thinking in two weeks when they 'really' delete it that would take care of that part for me.

And to be extra sure, you should log back in, download all your images, make new images of random data but that match the size of the previous ones (matching hashes are a bonus), then upload these in place of the old ones, wait a day (for everything to get flushed to backups), then delete everything. This way even if they

I'm pretty sure anyone who would actually go to that level to get rid of their account is also so paranoid they would have never signed up. Or a "cleaner" (in the mafia sense) covering up a crime. Actually it almost sounds like a job opportunity.

When you delete/modify your data, FB actually appends the new dataset to the end of their DB table and makes its "current" pointer point to that. The data actually never gets deleted. This is not an RDBMS.

I've been using facebook for a long time now. I know all about zukerberg's questionable past and general sliminess. But tell me this, what lack privacy settings is everybody complaining about? I checked the privacy page just now and it seems I have control over everything I can think of. And the interface is pretty straight forward. Is there something I'm missing? Or are people just having a knee jerk reaction here?

This is a serious question, if there is a important privacy setting missing from facebook I want to know because I use it everyday.

Furthermore, the privacy settings are not as straight forward as they seem. Case in point is Facebook's new instant personalization feature that will show one's interests to others, including the general public - see link for more details.

On a related note, the number of Facebook friends one has is a risk in of itself... you may have your privacy settings locked down tight, but what about all your friends?

The more "friends", the more risk of one or more of them being "hacked" and your "private" information being leaked out as a result. Then there's the related issue of "friends of friends", which is in and of itself is seemingly innocuous, but can become a privacy threat when one of them uses the same app you and/or friend does. "Rogue" friends are another privacy hole - very easy for one or more to slip in, especially for members who already have large friend lists.

If you really think you understand your privacy settings on Facebook and you have not invested a significant amount of effort to do so then you've most definitely been "zuckerpunched". There are all kinds of odd things sequested away in dark corners of the settings and profile page.

My most recent was when a bunch of people I barely knew started congratulating me on my birthday. Even though I'd disabled all the ways I though that information was available. Turns out there was another setting somewhere under "Profile", I think, with a checkbox that said something like "reveal my birthday to everyone".

I've been using facebook for a long time now. I know all about zukerberg's questionable past and general sliminess. But tell me this, what lack privacy settings is everybody complaining about? I checked the privacy page just now and it seems I have control over everything I can think of. And the interface is pretty straight forward. Is there something I'm missing? Or are people just having a knee jerk reaction here?

This is a serious question, if there is a important privacy setting missing from facebook I want to know because I use it everyday.

Until about a year ago, you were allowed to set your profile picture and friends list to be viewable by "friends only". Now they're completely public. Same now (starting last week) with Work History, Education History, Current City, Hometown, Likes and Interests. What's worse is that there are options in the privacy settings to make you think you're putting the information for these things in as viewable for "only friends", but it doesn't do anything, and there is hidden text on another page explaining w

Not really. The main privacy problems aren't what they do but rather that they do it without notifying users and thus not obtaining their consent.

Imagine if I signed a contract that stated I would pay $500 in rent every month. Seven months later I get a letter saying that I owed back rent despite paying my $500 every month. Would it really hold up in court that the landlords had a 'right' to change the contract without notifying their tenants? But that is exactly what Facebook is doing. It is nothing more than online bait-and-switch only worse because generally with bait and switch you know that a change is taking place before you fork over the cash.

The problems with your example are (1) you only fork over cash to your landlord while you pay nothing to Facebook, and (2) you agree to a term for a lease whereas neither FB nor you are obligated to continue providing nor using the service.

FB is able to create value from you personal information. They have been incrementally changing their service in order to maximize the value of this information -- and it's something you give them every time you use their service. You are free to stop using their service

No, because money was never limited by the supply of materials to produce it, but by the state (or in the US, the Federal Reserve). We decide that money is finite because otherwise it would be useless.

No, because money was never limited by the supply of materials to produce it, but by the state (or in the US, the Federal Reserve). We decide that money is finite because otherwise it would be useless.

"Never" is incorrect. US-ians lost their right to own real money (gold) ca. 1932. Your Federal Reserve was forced down your throats at a time of widespread fiscal panic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard [wikipedia.org]

Money (value) is NOT finite! There's a whole fscking Universe out there filled with value, if we can get to it.

Small wonder that now your financial wizards on Wall St. now consider "value" nothing more than Monopoly pieces that they move around the board. That's what fiat money is; m

Agreed. But in the current system, it isn't the state who creates money - it's banks, in the form of debt, via the mechanism of fractional reserve lending. Fractional reserve essentially creates negative value because all new money is created not just as debt, but as debt plus interest - so more money must be paid back than actually exists. Because of this, the amount of money in the system must constantly grow, regardless of the actual value of transactions occurring, or a systemic crash occurs. This disto

Its not your data any more. You published it online and lost any control you might have had over it. Sorry.

Now what in the world would make you think you lose your right to control something because you make it available online?

Seriously, when a book goes to the public library, does that mean the author relinquishes his rights to it? When an artist's music is sold through iTunes, does that mean he no longer can claim ownership? When a video is published on YouTube, does that mean it can never be taken dow

If I tell you something in this very reply, can I then prohibit you from divulging you to somewhat else?

The idea of "ownership" of information is a slippery one at best. If an author's book goes to the public library, the author can't tell the library not to loan it out. If I tell someone something, I can't prohibit them from telling others. I might be able to ask them not to, or even ask them to sign a contract saying they won't and refuse to tell them if they won't sign, but I can't actually lock it away

I'm pretty sure the poster was talking about data portability, not ownership. He wants to be able to export his data when he leaves (a la Google's Data Liberation Front [dataliberation.org]). There's no automated way to get your photos, blog posts, connection information, and the like out of FB.

The comparison still works just the same. If I decide I don't like Slashdot (or any number of other places) anymore, I can quit posting any further, but I can't remove what I already did post. And even if I could, someone may well have mirrored, copied, or reproduced it elsewhere.

The bottom line remains, never put something on the Internet that you do not want the world to know in perpetuity. Quite often, there is no way to "take it back".

I'm not even sure there should be a means to take it back. An author can't decide two years later that they regret writing a book, and demand that all copies be confiscated and burned, reviews of it be deleted and destroyed, and other records of it be erased. When you publish something in a public medium, it is part of the public record. Regret it or not, you really can't unsay something.

How about Facebook give us the ability to take our data with us so when everyone realizes what they are doing we can move somewhere else?

Any data on Facebook that is yours is because you provided it to them. All you need to do is re-provide it elsewhere. The other information such as what friends have written on your wall, for example, is information provided by them and isn't yours. Get them to re-provide their information wherever else you choose to go.

...You mean like how right by every single post in the news feed there is a button where you can hide posts from certain people, groups, etc?

The problem is that the hide button doesn't allow you to hide certain type of news from the feed (at least not anymore). You can hide entire applications, and entire actions of persons from showing up. I would love to be able to hide notices such as "person X commented on person Y's message" or "Person X likes person Y's status", and so on - because I don't care about them and I think they're just adding crap to my news feed - but if I click "hide" it will hide all the messages of the said person.

Outlook Express has been my favorite mail client for quite awhile (though I've been using Outlook 2010 for awhile and the conversation view is growing on me). In fact, I always found the UI rather simple and straightforward - what are the evil parts of the interface you're referring to?

In the event of true famine, they would make a good, albeit socially appalling food source. So I can see how pestillence leads to famine, which leads to killing puppies, but how does killing puppies cause a war?

Where to start.Shoddy craftsmanship. Highly illogical. Dumb all over (and maybe a little ugly on the side).After using PINE http://www.washington.edu/pine/ [washington.edu] for a couple of years I was confronted with OE on someone's computer somewhere. It was like a kick to the balls. Now get of my lawn : ).

Outlook Express and Outlook are different applications. Former is truely awful email client in pretty much every way (protocol support is a joke, it corrupts its own database, security track record is abysmal, the whole application seems to be implemented by amateurs) -- Microsoft replaced OE with Windows Mail for a reason. Outlook on the other hand is a fairly usable email/PIM client as long as you use it _exactly_ as God and Microsoft intended.

- Placing and resizing plasmids on the dashboard can literally drive you insane. Because after doing so and releasing the mouse button, you *have* to stay on that element, or the plasmid will reset its position to what it was before. Also it is extremely annoying. If you got two elements right next to each other, the drag bar of the wrong plasmid always keeps popping up right between holding the mouse over the right plasmid, and pressing down t

ok, this was so wrong i just have to answer.note, i'm an oldtime kde user, and i still use kde 3.5.10 (on slackware) on my main computers.currently i'm typing this on a temporary computer with kde 4.3.something. and you know what ? i actually like a lot of things about it enough to consider upgrading from kde3.

That’s nothing. KDE4 even beats Windows ME in this regard.

- Placing and resizing plasmids on the dashboard can literally drive you insane. Because after doing so and releasing the mouse button, you *have* to stay on that element, or the plasmid will reset its position to what it was before.

first, they are PLASMOIDS.second, you must have some very old version of kde4 - i don't recall sever seeing that problem even when trying out some older kde4 release.

Also it is extremely annoying. If you got two elements right next to each other, the drag bar of the wrong plasmid always keeps popping up right between holding the mouse over the right plasmid, and pressing down the mouse button. But since it is hard to see which one you are now dragging (both drag bars are transparent and looking the same), you are always manipulating the wrong one. It takes elaborate mouse acrobatics to get it to do what you want. So much that I’d strangle the designer, right here, right now.

We should stop giving something a negative score, only because some dickheads could use it to write angry replies. You may not like it, but it’s true.

Oh, and to a certain set of retards: Only because when you talk, you assume that your personal opinion is globally true, that does not mean that healthy people assume that, when they don’t specifically mention it! When I say “The worst interface”m then ob.vi.ous.ly I mean to me. There is no need to mention it, since it’s assumed.

Instead of privacy controls, how about not entering information you want to keep to yourself or a select few from ever getting on the site in the first place ? It's already been proven that what is private now will not necessarily be kept private, and there's always leaks and whatnot. Is it really that hard to just NOT put certain stuff on these sites to begin with ?

As soon as you see the word "richer", as in "richer user experience", hold on to your wallet. The only thing rich about a "richer user experience" is how rich it is going to make the person forcing it on you.

FB has become less deceptive in some of their newer things. Not that it's a good thing (the method they have done so). Want to list a certain thing about yourself? Sure. If you have it linked to the page/group/whatever about it. Thus exposing your interests and yourself to the world.

...or you can have your profile info page blank.

No option C anymore.

So, nowadays, it has become more of a use of strongarm tactics to ensure that your data is everywhere and available to anyone as opposed to deceptively tricking people into doing so.

I'm not sure which is worse. The current method for me (well, if I cared. Anything I put on FB on my info section is already all over the web or the Star Trek Phase 2 site or IMDB).

One's very annoying (the "we're posting this info linked to you wherever we choose, or you can choose to have an empty profile" method) and the old method is deceptively evil (the "we'll simply confuse you into allowing us to post your info unless you take the time to stop and read what you are doing and opt out" method).

I guess a lot of people were getting smarter - especially with so many warnings online and via other FB friends telling people to click/unclick new "hidden" privacy options on FB every time a new change rolled out. So, FB got smart in creating a new way of using that info with no privacy settings to prevent them from - either post the info so they can do what they want with it - or remove all the info entirely.

I went to upload some photos and it told me that the only way to do this way to use the new shiny facebook photo uploader app, and asked me to install it. I said no (no way, in fact) and cancelled out of it, only to be directed to a page that said "you will have to use the simple uploader but it's not as good". Wait, what? Didn't you just tell me that the new app was the only way to upload photos now (yes, yes it did)?

It's things like that - tricking people into installing facebook apps - that make me question their motives.

I went to upload some photos and it told me that the only way to do this way to use the new shiny facebook photo uploader app, and asked me to install it. I said no (no way, in fact) and cancelled out of it, only to be directed to a page that said "you will have to use the simple uploader but it's not as good". Wait, what? Didn't you just tell me that the new app was the only way to upload photos now (yes, yes it did)?

It's things like that - tricking people into installing facebook apps - that make me question their motives.

LoL... that is why I said "LESS deceptive" instead of "Not deceptive anymore";-)

Interestingly, the main article linked clearly shows a check box that allows you to turn off making your list of friends available. I go to that same page they are showing and the check box is no longer there. Also, they have a very deceptive page for setting your "visibility" of various things (home town, likes, interests, etc.). It has the normal drop-down for "everyone, friends only, friends of friends, and custom". However when you set them to say "friends only" and re-visit the page a few minutes later

The former was not disingenuous, it's just a perfect example of the widespread use of malicious interface design.

A matter of definitions I guess but to me malicious interface design is disingenuous, in this case claiming the something is available by clicking on the link (full text pdf) when further steps are actually required. It's usually fairly clearcut whether an interface is dishonest or not - it's just that many dishonest people try to wiggle out of it.

So I was buying a ticket through Ticketmaster, which is a harrowing process. I don't normally do this, so I did not know how harrowing. I will not even discuss the deceptive practice of displaying a total price for tickets, then add in a $6 charge at the very end.

Here is what I found reprehensible is that when I choose to not store my credit card information on their site, a pop up window with the their privacy policy pops up. Clearly, if it so important to them that I keep my credit card information on their site, then it stands to reason that they intend to misuse it in some way. Ticketmaster already lied to me about the amount they were going to charge to credit card, who knows what else they lie about. Perhaps I was being enrolled in a club that would charge me $50 a month to have priority access to future purchase opportunities. I don't know. I don't know why they would confuse the user and kill a sale just to get to keep my credit information.

Heh. The thing you have to realize, is that Ticketmaster has never been "not evil." They've never even gotten any "not evil" on them accidentally. Bitching about ticketmaster is like the frog bitching about the scorpion in the classic fable.

Most gas stations have the gas grades from lowest to highest, left to right respectively. However some gas stations reverse the order from right to left, thus possibly hitting the more expensive high grade. Damn evil oil companies:)

Seriously? Every pump I've been to has the grade shown in 2 inch high letters directly on the button with the price shown directly above. When you press the button it lights up and the price is displayed at the top. How could you possibly cock this up?

More worrisome is the recent revelation that many gas pumps to under dispense fuel by 2 - 3%. The government here (BC) did a random test and found a lot of cheating...

It's actually a volume question. If we all would start using that term, and then get some well known people to follow suite, *WE* would define the term. I must admit I like the whole idea of using "zuck" for any deceptive activity that impacts your privacy - I would support that no problem. "Evil interfaces" is, sorry, total crap.

First of all will it confuse people with Google's "Do no evil unless we make money on it", secondly it's not very creative and about as juveline as the content of that video the

Anybody remember Real Media? I hear that they've mostly cleaned up their act, but once upon a time they pulled every trick they could think of. If you started an order on their web site, they would take you to a page with what you want to order, checkmarked, and then a whole bunch of worthless stuff beneath the page fold, also checkmarked. If you didn't uncheck all of the stuff beneath the fold, they would charge you for all of that stuff too. I'm not sure if the full price was even listed before you filled

thepiratebay.org has something of a classic. Search, find, click, go to the download page, but wait, don't click on the big green "Download" button, that's for a toolbar or something which no doubt they get paid a little something for every time someone clicks. What you want is the smaller "DOWNLOAD THIS TORRENT" link underneath the inviting big green "Download" button.

No big deal since I like TPB, and what does one expect of pirates? "Yarrr, suckered ye good Jimmy me lad, now give us rum."

Quite possibly the most important info on Facebook is your friends. You can have an empty profile you still have all your friend connections. And if you have 10 friends who said in their profiles that they all went to the same school. You probably did too.

Mark Zuckerberg is a cock. Like anyone he is just doing what he can to be rich but he is shitting all over a lot of people and unfortunately people seem to be fine with this because they don't realise the negative effects of FB until it hits them.

Mark is not going to give up access to your data, it is what makes him rich, so people need to realise it's not smart to talk about your vagina or how drunk you got in such a public area. Once they realise that's dumb then maybe they'll tell Mark to quit shilling their data and that little twat will have to find another way to get rich.

Problem is, most people may never figure it out even when those negative effects hit. Facebook itself doesn't do anything- it's the companies paying for your information that are doing harm. Unless people learn how those marketers got your information, facebook won't have to worry about people wising up- that would only happen if mainstream news picks up the story and sells it as the latest big scare. Chances are that will never happen.

Is it a large building? A lot of buildings use this arrangement because alternating the location of the men's and women's bathrooms minimizes the average distance-to-bathroom. For example, if the men's bathroom on my floor is on the north side and I work on the south side, going up one floor to the south-side bathroom there would be faster than going to the north-side bathroom on the other end of my floor.